X

Then she glided beyond earshot, and they sat down to watch her up the harbour. And still Mrs. Cheyne wept.

“Pshaw, my dear,” said Mrs. Troop: “we’re both women, I guess. Like’s not it’ll ease your heart to hev your cry aout. God He knows it never done me a mite o’ good, but then He knows I’ve had something to cry fer!”

Now it was a few years later, and upon the other edge of America, that a young man came through the clammy sea fog up a windy street which is flanked with most expensive houses built of wood to imitate stone. To him, as he was standing by a hammered iron gate, entered on horseback⁠—and the horse would have been cheap at a thousand dollars⁠—another young man. And this is what they said:

“Hello, Dan!”

“Hello, Harve!”

“What’s the best with you?”

“Well, I’m so’s to be that kind o’ animal called second mate this trip. Ain’t you most through with that triple invoiced college of yours?”

“Getting that way. I tell you, the Leland Stanford Junior, isn’t a circumstance to the old We’re Here ; but I’m coming into the business for keeps next fall.”

“Meanin’ aour packets?”

“Nothing else. You just wait till I get my knife into you, Dan. I’m going to make the old line lie down and cry when I take hold.”